Best and worst travel insurance

How do you find the best travel insurance?

With luck, you'll never need to use your travel insurance. But should disaster strike your long-waited holiday, you'll be glad to have it.

To help you make the right choice, we've analysed hundreds of policies, scrutinising more than 60 areas of cover in each one.  

As well as using our research to find the right insurer for you, doing the following will help you get great cover: 

Search widely

Casting a wide net is always advisable when searching for insurance. Using multiple comparison sites to do so is a great start – however, some of us will need to look further afield to find affordable cover.

We've provided tips on how customers with medical conditions can locate difficult-to-find policies, as well as reviews of specialist providers that don't always lie on the beaten path.

Arrange your cover quickly

When you buy a policy, you're not just paying to protect your period of travel - you're also covering unexpected situations that prevent you from setting off. Make sure you have cover in place from the point you've booked your trip. 

Check the T&Cs

Few of us enjoy reading insurance policy wording, but being acquainted with it is the only real way of understanding what your policy offers and what it doesn't.

If there are specific reasons you've bought the cover, check these sections to make sure they align with your expectations. Also check the policy's general exclusions and conditions. If anything in the policy is unclear, contact the insurer.

Check what protection your holiday provider offers

Travel insurance is designed to be the last port of call as insurers will expect you to have tried recouping what you can through other channels first. It's therefore a good idea to familiarise yourself with the terms of your holiday booking.

What are the best travel insurance policies?

We've compared the policies of more than 70 travel insurance providers to bring you our best and worst travel insurance tables - which list the best policies from each provider.

Members can log in to see which insurers genuinely stand out. If you're not already a member, join Which? and get full access to these results and all our reviews.

All ratings are for policies available to new customers, and the details were gathered in a survey carried out in May 2022. The information should be considered correct to then. We will next update our tables in June 2023. 

• Find out more: check our in-depth reviews for detailed breakdowns of cover

Covid cover - what our ratings show and don't show

All travel policies we looked at offer some element of protection if your holiday is disrupted by Covid – however, the degree of cover varies significantly between providers.

Most will, for example, pay a cancellation claim if you test positive with the virus and consequently can't travel – but only a minority would pay out if a government lockdown on travel disrupts your plans.

We've given each policy we've examined one of four Which? Covid-cover ratings:

• Basic The policy covers you for emergency medical cover if you catch Covid while on holiday 
• Low In addition to Basic cover, you can claim if you test positive for Covid and are unable to go on your trip.
• Superior In addition to Low cover, you'll be able to claim for cancellation if you're instructed to self-isolate at home because you've been identified as a contact of someone who tested positive. 
• Complete In addition to Superior cover, a policy with a Complete rating allows for cancellation if you can't travel because the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office advises against travel to your destination (since you booked the trip) because of Covid, or because of regional or national restrictions on movement. 

Of the 199 policies we examined, around two thirds now offer Superior level cover, while just nine offer Complete level cover.

Check the insurer's smallprint

Importantly, the ratings don't cover all possible ways Covid could interfere with your holiday.

There can, likewise, be differences with some areas of cover between policies that have the same Covid rating. This means it's crucial to check the terms of any policy before buying it to make sure it's appropriate for you as there will always be some restrictions.

How else can you protect your holiday?

We think travel insurance is a vital part of your holiday plans, but it doesn't exist in isolation.

Travel insurers only expect you to claim with them if you've been unable to recover your money through other channels.

Package holiday companies

If a package holiday firm cancels your holiday, or airlines can't fulfil flights, you're entitled to a refund by law.

Unfortunately, in the wake of Covid, not all travel providers fulfilled their legal obligations. For peace of mind, choose a firm that is one of our Which? Recommended Providers. 

• Find out more: Your legal rights with package holiday companies

Atol protection

If you buy a package holiday that includes flights from an Atol protected firm, you'll get your money back if it goes bust. You'll also be repatriated if this happens while you're on holiday.

• Find out more: how do I know if my holiday is Atol protected?

Your credit card provider

If you can, pay for your holiday with a credit card.

If you pay with a credit card for services costing more than £100 and less than £30,000 that aren't provided as advertised, you can claim the money back from your card supplier if the seller (ie, the holiday company) won't refund you.

• Find out more: Section 75  

Your bank

Banks have similar schemes to help you recover money for services that haven't been fulfilled as paid for. These are known as chargeback.

Chargeback can be used to recover debit and prepaid card payments, as well as credit card payments below £100.

Banks aren't legally bound to do this in the same way credit card providers are under Section 75, so you should always pay for amounts over £100 with a credit card if possible.

• Find out more: how to use chargeback

How we find the best travel insurance policies

In May 2022, we surveyed 71 insurance companies about 61 different areas of cover from each of their policies. We analysed the data and awarded each policy a policy score.

A high score indicates that overall, the policy has comparatively high levels of cover. However, when using our tables, you should bear in mind the following:

• Travel insurance is complex, which means that even if a policy has a high score, it might not include certain elements of cover that you're looking for. You can see at a glance in our tables how each provider's best scoring policy compares for a  selection of features. For a more detailed look at some of the larger and higher-scoring providers, see our travel insurance reviews.    
• The policy score doesn't examine the insurers' customer service or how much their policies cost.
• The data was collected in May 2022. We recommend confirming information about a provider's policy directly with it before buying.